- Duration: 27 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01K2Z6N89Y2VDWFDG2631HJSYJ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K2Z6N89Y2VDWFDG2631HJSYJ)
Transcript
[Blake Stewart]: Yo. Hey, how’s it going? [Blake Stewart]: What’s up man, how you doing? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m good. [Blake Stewart]: Doing well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What’s going on? [Blake Stewart]: Was your sister in town last week? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, showed her around for a few days and I think she liked it, so we’ll see. Yeah, I’m growing to think that it might be a good spot to get a place for a bit, so I don’t know. [Blake Stewart]: I’m about to let these guys in, so. [Michael Houck]: Go for it. Oh. Hey, guys. [Aman]: How’s it going, guys? [Michael Houck]: What’s up, everybody? Are you on a Yeah, I’m just doing my best to get my steps in. We’ll see where we get to today, but the goal is always 15K, so we’ll see. [Aman]: Oh, nice. All right. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, fair enough. Is it regularly 15,000? [Aman]: My average is about 13,000, but we’ll see. You’ll do it. We believe in you. Obviously met, so maybe just both very quickly, the guys introducing themselves. I mean, the founders of High Harbour as well, but I’ll let maybe Ash and Tom just do a quick introduction of themselves as well. Maybe Ash or Tom, one of you guys first. Ash, we can hear you by the way. [Ash Ravi]: That would explain a lot. Lovely to meet both of you. Yeah, by way of my background, I was an investment and then moved into private equity. So I’ve co-founded High Harbour with Aman Mann and Tong, and we’ve been going for about 15 to 18 months. And yeah, just as I’ve also got a private equity business on the side that I do alongside High Harbour. Yeah, I’m Tong. [Tong Zhi]: So I went to school in the US and did Babson. Not sure if Michael, you’ve heard of Babson, but I saw LinkedIn and I saw a few connections. That we have in common from Babson. So I figured you might’ve heard of them. [Michael Houck]: I know Babson, but don’t trust my LinkedIn connections. I get about a hundred a day. So don’t trust it. [Tong Zhi]: Fair enough. Yeah, I was there and I went to the UK for a master’s in data science. And then after I graduated, I worked in private equity for a couple of years. That’s how I met Admin. And so, yeah, that’s where we started at Heart Harbor as well. It’s nice to meet you guys. Oh, I’m gonna be late, but yeah, nice to meet you, Michael. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, nice to meet you both. Thanks for hopping on. Appreciate the full team and also appreciate the flexibility. I think last week we had to move to this week, so I appreciate that. And give just very brief background on me, if that’d be helpful. So I did my time in big tech. I was part of the early team that built and stood up and scaled Uber Eats. And then I was at Airbnb for a couple of years as a product manager, jumped over to the startup world after that, and founded a company called Launch Houck. Between our C Corp and our fund, we raised a total of about $23 million from Andreessen and some other great investors. I ended up folding that into the fund. And so since then, I’ve focused on this bootstrap holding company that we built around the Founding Journey Media brand, around my socials, also around Megaphone, which is our sort of creator network slash content agency that we work with, you know, startups ranging from early stage all the way to sort of billionaire beats seats. So that’s sort of what we that’s sort of what we do today. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Aman]: Do you want to do a quick intro, Blake, just to explain how you’re involved. I know Tom and I have met you before. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, not much on my end. I’m Blake. I live in Los Angeles. I’ve been in the startup in Venture Space for about seven years now. Yeah, so working with HALC on a couple of different things. And yeah, I see a lot of alignment here. So I’m kind of curious to see how we could tie it together. [Aman]: Yeah. Okay, cool. So, I mean, like I said, from our perspective, we’re super keen to work together in some way, shape or form. And, you know, we have a in terms of what that might look like, But to be honest, it’s difficult to make a proposal without kind of all of us getting on the phone and kind of talking about what that, what the success looks like to you guys as well. You know, like I said before, I mean, we very much believe in your distribution and I think also just like you guys, both of you. And like I said, you know, when I looked at the newsletter, I mean, there was a lot of names I recognized and saw. So I’m sure there’s a good way to get And I think fundamentally, I think we’re all driven, motivated, ambitious, and we want to get somewhere. So I see synergies not just kind of from a business perspective, but also kind of just from a personal perspective. And who knows what might lead to. So yeah, that’s kind of I think where we are. So we have some ideas, but I think it’s understanding from you guys what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. And then kind of just making this a forward and then getting something on paper. It doesn’t have to be the fancy legal document, you know, at least something where everyone’s happy, like, okay, like, no one’s getting paid or anything as such. So yeah, have you given it much thought? Any ideas on your end, or? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I can, I’ll probably toss it to Blake, but just first want to echo, I mean, what you said, like, you know, I think we really hit it off on our call. I felt really good about it. I like sort of the way you’re thinking about this market. It’s a market that we’ve sort of been aware of and sort of dipped our toe into with partnerships over the past two plus years. You know, we worked with Athena, For a long time and if we sort of start working with you guys, obviously, you know We probably factor in exclusivity to that and sort of not, you know Continue to put up eating brands and promote them and things like that. You guys are covered there. Don’t worry But yeah, it’s a space we know really well and then our audience has responded really well too for a while now so I Think when we met just hit it off. I was like, yeah, let’s let’s see where this goes And let’s let’s try to make something work here. So just my POV Very excited to sort of see where we can take this and I think Blake has some some ideas from our end Okay. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see it as a fit I mean, it’s obviously been one of our top performing categories of how we you know, our readers need this service Need to hire. Uh, I guess that’s my only concern is like if we do lock in a partnership and you know, we give you guys a any of our cash flow and hurt ourselves in the end. So I just want to make sure it’s worth it. Obviously, I want to make sure it’s worth it for you, too, and you guys see results and performance on both sides. But my hesitation would be to set up an exclusivity deal with you guys, only promote you, and then not have the opportunity to sell to other services and kind of shoot ourselves in the foot there. So I know we’ve only run one placement before as well, and the results weren’t amazing. So I think I’d prefer to kind of go forward a little slower, you know, test out a little bit more, a couple more placements to make sure you guys are seeing results, we’re seeing results. And it does make sense on a longer term partnership kind of deal. So I love the idea of partnering together. I think it is a fit. But yeah, I just want to make sure that we’re not going into this too quickly signing a deal that doesn’t Yeah, it makes sense. [Aman]: So what does that mean in terms of what you’re looking for, right? So, you know, there’s kind of chicken and egg, right? So I think the concern for us is we don’t want to lock in too quickly without, you know, paying for free 4k for placement every week without any real kind of results, which is why, you know, we want to or at least the route we had in mind was, okay, well, each conversion effectively is the price of one casement or close to. And I’m also very, I think from our perspective, pretty relaxed in terms of also putting in a, you know, after you’ve closed a certain number of clients or we’ve had some calls or had some conversions that then turns into some form of a fee to you guys fixed monthly basis. I think our concern is more around, we put up, we committed 20, 30 grand. Even 10, right? Because 10, this is free placements and who knows how those three go. People might be away, they’re traveling, they’ll holiday, whatever. So what do you say? What’s the proposal? You guys are saying, let’s do five placements over the next few months. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I think so. [Blake Stewart]: I mean, happy to give you a pretty big discount as well, and just kind of test more of the timeline as well. So yeah, like two months, and we could place you several times. I just want to see. Yeah, I mean, we could cut it down a good amount, and I could give you a better number looking at it, kind of just filling the gaps too. But I just want to make sure that we can perform on our side and you guys, but I think just a lower commitment. If you guys have a budget in mind, we can kind of, you know, fill the gaps and make it, you know, pretty high, high placement. And, you know, yeah. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And just to echo that, like we would, um, again, sort of in the lens of viewing this as a potential longterm partnership, you know, we would come down on sort of what our normal, what we’d normally charge you for a package or something like that for you guys. So. So that’s how we’re thinking about it. [Ash Ravi]: That makes sense. Out of curiosity, because Aman and Tong have kind of given me the background, we’ve kind of had conversations leading up to this discussing this package. Would you mind running me through a few of the kind of conversion metrics that you’ve seen historically from your newsletter to customers? [Blake Stewart]: Yeah. Go ahead. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, so I mean, just from the top, we’ve got about 60k subscribers. We’re pretty good about cleaning those up. So we run ads to bring more people in. And if you know, they’re not opening, we kind of, you know, kick them out, let them fall out. So open rates around 50% will hire kind of fluctuates. That’s like one and a half click through rate. We don’t drop too many links in there too. So when we do put, you know, partners, front and center, you know, people look to how because, you know, pretty trusted voice in the space. So, you know, we prefer not to have too many ads. And if we do run through this with you guys, we’d want to, I’d want to kind of make sure it’s pretty native and, you know, organic verbiage of how we promote you guys. But yeah, our feature placement sees around 500 clicks. So you’re getting some pretty good exposure, pretty good leads coming through. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And just to add to that from like the ROI side, you know, we’ve, Again, I don’t want to harp on one particular example too much, but just since it’s such a relevant example, I think it’s worth digging into a little bit. Over a multi-year time horizon, Athena has spent over 100K with us on various things. That includes dinners, that includes newsletter placements, even YouTube video ads and some of our podcast episodes. So they’ve sort of seen value all across our ecosystem. Just sharing because I think it’s a highly relevant example here. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, that kind of speaks to my point of like, you know, we’ve got this good relationship with them. If we move forward with you guys, we obviously can’t move forward with them as well. So we’re kind of giving up on a pretty good partnership already. [Aman]: So we just want to make sure this is also… [Aman]: What was the reason that Athena stopped continuing their, I guess, their advertising slash marketing with you guys? [Blake Stewart]: They said they were having trouble with their supply side. So, you know, was fine with them. They were getting plenty of leads from us. They just kind of keep up. Yeah, it was that. [Michael Houck]: And then the secondary reason was also that they were starting to move beyond the founder, like archetype as their target customer. I spoke with the CEO and he was like, yeah, you know, we’re trying to go more broad into other verticals and things like that. So it’s just budget. Yeah, about two years, I think yeah, yeah Okay With with some other folks as well and It wasn’t like there was some you know, it wasn’t like there’s nothing coming out of that for that. So just the one brand, different brand, you can still sort of hit on it, even if it’s in the same space, maybe Athena’s messaging. [Aman]: What do you guys think made Athena successful, right? Like, is it just the fact that they were seen everywhere in the same circles? So they’re coming onto your newsletter, they’re doing a podcast and then being spoken to about by some VC and then, is it all of it? I guess it’s all of it. [Michael Houck]: I think that’s probably part of it. I mean, any brand that’s being sort of pushed by various trustworthy sources that folks see and they see them multiple places, you get more reps, more shots on goal sort of to convert them and make them trust you too and get sort of that affiliation. At the same time, I would say that we did a really good job of pushing them through not just ads, So content and experiences. So we did the dinners in New York. Those went well, those led to conversions for them. And also we actually kicked it off by doing a deep dive interview with me and Jonathan, who he’s not the CEO, he was the founder. He founded Thumbtack before that. And so we did like a piece about his like master delegation system that sort of changed his life and let him and his wife sort of live this very easy life, despite the fact that they’re building a startup. And that really resonated with a lot of folks. And so if, you know, maybe we could do something like that, that sort of, obviously not the same exact topic, but sort of resonates with folks in the same way. And therefore, it makes it so that we’re not just pushing a brand. But it seems like, hey, you know, I am interested in you guys, I think you guys are interesting founders, let’s talk about what you know, that the audience might not know, if they trust that they’ll trust the company you’re building. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That resonates pretty well. [Ash Ravi]: And I think we’re all basically talking from the same script in the way that if this works, then we’re very happy to share the upside. We’re kind of keen to share that part. As with you, it just needs to work for us. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Aman]: Yeah. [Aman]: Yeah, agreed. I mean, look, we’re definitely open to ideas. So why don’t you just send us a proposal of like, this is what it looks like from our end. This is what we would want it to be in the short term. And then this is what could be in the medium term. It doesn’t need to be anything long, even just a short email with a few bullet points. And then, I mean, we’ll come back pretty quickly. I mean, like I said, I’m super keen to work together. I just don’t want to put us in a position where we start over-committing too quickly and then we’re like, shit. [Michael Houck]: We’ve over-committed and we’re like, fuck. [Michael Houck]: We don’t want to put you guys in that spot either. We know when you’re in growth, early stages, it’s like, well, you know, every, every dollar is, uh, is valuable. [Aman]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Like I said, right. [Aman]: I think from, again, I don’t know. With you guys at the time, I’m sure it’s been, I’m sure it’s been lots. Um, you know, and I think I mentioned this to you, Mike, where if things go well and be a certain, some form of milestone, which we pre-agree or whatever, that we’re open to also giving you less equity than in the business. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. [Aman]: It’s not just cash flow, but also, um, hopefully equity upside and hopefully the business will give us lots of money at some point. So, yeah. [Michael Houck]: And I think that’s, that’s part of the reason that I was sort of excited to do this call to sort of go deeper with you guys and potentially turn over that leaf. Because, you know, when we were talking about that, again, I’m just, I’m looking you as, Hey, you’re a founder, you’re building this company. Like how much, how much do I trust you? Right. And so I think I got a good vibe and a good impression. [Aman]: So, uh, that’s, that’s part of the reason we’re excited about on our end too. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Okay. Do you guys want to send us an email then? [Michael Houck]: And then we’ll, we’ll come back to, well, whenever you send a plus two or three days. [Aman]: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll follow up tonight. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sounds good. [Aman]: Cool. Okay. Awesome. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thanks guys. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Last one. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, thanks guys.